As an example of a related art, slide-open mobile phones are well known. JP 2007-28417A published on Feb. 1, 2007, discloses one example of such a related art. The slide-open mobile phone has a first case with a plurality of operation buttons and a second case with a monitor screen that is slidably arranged on an upper surface of the first cabinet. When the two cases are overlapped (closed), the second case is slid to thereby expose the operation buttons on the first case to the outside.
Meanwhile, as another example of a related art, in recent years there has been developed a mobile phone that has a touch sensor (contact sensor) in a layout area of operation buttons. This device recognizes characters or the like handwritten within a detection area of the touch sensor on the basis of position information from the touch sensor, thereby enabling not only input by the operation buttons but also handwriting input. JP 2007-66169A published on Mar. 15, 2007, discloses one example of the related art. Enabling handwriting input in this manner further improves user friendliness.
This handwriting input function can also be applied to the foregoing slide-open mobile phones.